Betty Winston Bayé | Efforts to discourage voting should not be heeded

8:05 PM,
Oct. 27, 2010

Written by

Betty Winston Bayé
The Courier-Journal

Before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, minority voter suppression schemes were quite common, especially in the segregated South. Potential voters were threatened with bodily harm and sometimes death. There were threats of being fired or evicted. When those tactics didn't work, "uppity" minorities were required to take literacy tests, which besides being unconstitutional were laughable since the exams were sometimes administered by people who couldn't have read the answers with guns to their heads.

Over time, overt voter intimidation gave away to subtle efforts; for ...